Jean-Jacques Quisquater, a prominent expert in data security at
the Catholic University of Louvain, could have been spied upon
for months, De Standaard daily reports.

The intrusion into his computer was revealed during an
investigation into hacking
attacks against the Belgian state-owned telecoms firm
Belgacom. Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward
Snowden, and reported by Der Spiegel in September 2013, indicated
that the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was
the likely organization behind the infiltration of the company’s
computers.

Belgian investigators discovered that Quisquater’s computer was
allegedly hacked in the same way as Belgacom’s. The professor
believed he was responding to a LinkedIn message, while in fact
he was directed to a copycat website that infected his computer
with spying malware.

“The Belgian federal police sent me a warning about this
attack and did the analysis,” Quisquater told Gigaom.

The scientist assumes there are plenty of reasons he could have
been targeted.

“There are many hypotheses (about 12 or 15) but it is
certainly an industrial espionage plus a surveillance of people
working about civilian cryptography.”

Jean-Jacques Quisquater holds 17 patents and is considered a
major expert in payment security.

De Standaart notes Quisquater had contact with NXP, a company
specializing in electronic equipment and communications security
with headquarters in the Netherlands and a cryptography lab in
Leuven, Belgium. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's hacked mobile
could have reportedly been protected by NXP technology.

The Quisquater hacking case comes to spotlight a week after
Edward Snowden in his TV
interview to German broadcaster ARD revealed the NSA has not
only been spying for reasons of national security, but in in the
interests of US companies as well.

“There is no question that the US is engaged in economic
spying,” Snowden said.

If an industrial giant like Siemens has something that the NSA
believes “would be beneficial to the national interests, not
the national security, of the United States, they will go after
that information and they'll take it,” the whistleblower
said.

The Quisquater case could prove Snowden’s claims if the NSA’s or
CGHQ’s role in it is confirmed.